Confession time… I’ve not done any POF advertising yet. I know, I know it’s an affiliate sin. But that’s the shocking truth of the matter.

Pretty interesting to start a blog post called the “definitive resource”, right?

After doing some research on the topic I decided to share the best tips I’ve seen on the topic to date. So, while I may not be the most experienced guy on the topic you’ll get tips from several who are… hence… definitive!

First up – Advertising Tips from POF themselves

On Setup

Have you ever spent time creating uniuqe sub id urls for every ad in your campaign? It make sense that you’d want to track each ad to the best of your ability. There’s no need to do that on POF – they’ve made it much easier.

POF realizes that most of you use sub ID’s for tracking purposes. And the most annoying part when you have multiple ads is putting in a unique sub ID for each ad right?

Well, POF introduces the {creativeid:} tag that will automatically put in your creative ID into the tag! So you can use 1 URL for ALL your ads and the sub ID will populate automatically!!source

On Testing

Ever wondered how to test a big number of creatives on POF? Here’s a solid testing strategy to help you get the job done.

Here’s a typical scenario: you’re feeling inspired and decide to upload 100 ads (25 images, 4 headlines) for your campaign that is set to a $50/day budget. They say that ~20,000 impressions is a good indicator for future performance. Only problem is, at a $0.50 CPM, properly testing 100 ads in parallel would cost you $1000 & 20 days worth of testing. Can you afford to risk $1000 and 20 days to test 100 ads in ONE campaign?

A better way is to submit all ads, get them approved but test them in a serial fashion. Out of your 100 ads, test 5 at a time & pause the rest. 5 ads at 20,000 impressions each at $0.50 CPM = $50 (which is coincidentally, our daily budget). You get the results from your 5 and then move onto the next batch and so on and so forth. So this way, if you do find a winner, you’ll end up making a bit of money while testingsource

On Scaling

This sneaky little pro tip will piss off your competitors and bring you more traffic. Yes, it’s ethical. It’s just a bit hardball. But hell… that’s life.

…advertisers have been duplicating the same campaign over and over (literally, 10,000+ campaigns in an account). And many people will wonder why people do this. The short answer is: more traffic.

But it’s not like you duplicate your ads and magically, POF gets more impressions to deliver to you. Instead, you’re basically taking the spot away from a competitor. Let me explain. The 110×80′s have 3 spots from which they can show. Only having 1 campaign ensures a chance to capture 1 spot. Having 2 campaigns gives you a chance to getting 2/3 spots etc. So with 10,000+ campaigns, you have a much better chance of getting your ads shown and pushing out someone else who may be aiming at the same demo you are.source

On Optimizing

One of the greatest aspects of advertising on POF is the demographics control. You have the power to choose exactly who you want to speak to. That’s money in the bank. But how are you testing those demographics? 100’s of ads targeting different demographics? No need to do that with POF.

Ever run a campaign and think, “Hmm, I wonder what my conversions would have been like if I excluded _________ demographic since the beginning?”.

Instead of creating a new campaign to split test your current campaign without ________ demographic, you can now exclude the demographic WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON.

…So forget about creating 100′s of campaigns to split test a variable at time.source

Killer POF advertising tips from the horse’s mouth. If you’re interested in running ads on POF make sure you read all of the tips on this page first.

Don’t stop there though – here are a few more POF must read tips.

Which images work best on POF?

You might be surprised to see what’s working for men and women on POF. This is a fantastic interview with examples. I love examples. The big takeaway in my opinion is AMATEUR looking photos. People don’t want to see pictures of models – that’s unrealistic. They want to see pictures of people they could / would actually be with.

Read the whole interview for a virtual cornucopia of POF image tips here

Fundamental Principles to Advertising on POF

Fundamentals are not always the sexiest tips, but they are always necessary. This is a well written blog post on how to think about and approach POF advertising.